And so, despairing but not resigned, he took his stand on the very edge of the ditch. In an irony of obligingness he set half of his heels over the void, so that he was nicely balanced upon the edge of the cutting, and must go backwards and down into the mud when hit.
It was this position he had taken that gave him an inspiration in that last moment. The sergeant had moved away out of the line of fire, and he stood there alone, waiting, erect and with his head held high, his eyes upon the grey mass of musketeers—blurred alike by mist and semi-darkness—some twenty paces distant along the line of which glowed eight red fuses.
Wentworth's voice rang out with the words of command.
"Blow your matches!"
Brighter gleamed the points of light, and under their steel pots the faces of the musketeers, suffused by a dull red glow, sprang for a moment out of the grey mass, to fade once more into the general greyness at the word, "Cock your matches!"
"Guard your pans!" came a second later the captain's voice, and then:
"Present!"
There was a stir and rattle, and the dark, indistinct figure standing on the lip of the ditch was covered by the eight muskets. To the eyes of the firing-party he was no more than a blurred shadowy form, showing a little darker than the encompassing dark grey.
"Give fire!"
On the word Mr. Wilding lost the delicate, precarious balance he had been sustaining on the edge of the ditch, and went over backwards, at the imminent risk—as he afterwards related—of breaking his neck. At the same instant a jagged, eight-pointed line of flame slashed the darkness, and the thunder of the volley pealed forth to lose itself in the greater din of battle on Penzoy Pound, hard by.
CHAPTER XXIII. MR. WILDING'S BOOTS
In the filth of the ditch, Mr. Wilding rolled over and lay prone. He threw out his left arm, and rested his brow upon it to keep his face above the mud. He strove to hold his breath, not that he might dissemble death, but that he might avoid being poisoned by the foul gases that, disturbed by his weight, bubbled up to choke him. His body half sank and settled in the mud, and seen from above, as he was presently seen by Wentworth—who ran forward with the sergeant's lanthorn to assure himself that the work had been well done—he had all the air of being not only dead but already half buried.
And now, for a second, Mr. Wilding was in his greatest danger, and this from the very humaneness of the sergeant. The fellow advanced to the captain's side, a pistol in his hand. Wentworth held the light aloft and peered down into that six feet of blackness at the jacent figure.
"Shall I give him an ounce of lead to make sure, Captain?" quoth the sergeant. But Wentworth, in his great haste, had already turned about, and the light of his lanthorn no longer revealed the form of Mr. Wilding.
"There is not the need. The ditch will do what may remain to be done, if anything does. Come on, man. We are wanted yonder."
The light passed, steps retreated, the sergeant muttering, and then Wentworth's voice was heard by Wilding some little distance off.
"Bring up your muskets!"
"Shoulder!"
"By the right—turn! March!" And the tramp, tramp of feet receded rapidly.
Wilding was already sitting up, endeavouring to get a breath of purer air. He rose to his feet, sinking almost to the top of his boots in the oozy slime. Foul gases were belched up to envelop him. He seized at irregularities in the bank, and got his head above the level of the ground. He thrust forward his chin and took great greedy breaths in a very gluttony of air—and never came Muscadine sweeter to a drunkard's lips. He laughed softly to himself. He was alone and safe. Wentworth and his men had disappeared. Away in the direction of Penzoy Pound the sounds of battle swelled ever to a greater volume. Cannons were booming now, and all was uproar—flame and shouting, cheering and shrieking, the thunder of hastening multitudes, the clash of steel, the pounding of horses, all blent to make up the horrid din of carnage.
Mr. Wilding listened, and considered what to do. His first impulse was to join the fray. But, bethinking him that there could be little place for him in the confusion that must prevail by now, he reconsidered the matter, and his thoughts returning to Ruth—the wife for whom he had been at such pains to preserve himself on the very brink of death—he resolved to endanger himself no further for that night.
He dropped back into the ditch, and waded, ankle deep in slime, to the other side. There he crawled out, and gaining the moor lay down awhile to breathe his lungs. But not for long. The dawn was creeping pale and ghostly across the solid earth, and a faint fresh breeze was stirring and driving the mist in wispy shrouds before it. If he lingered there he might yet be found by some party of Royalist soldiers, and that would be to undo all that he had done. He rose, and struck out across the peaty ground. None knew the moors better than did he, and had he been with Grey's horse that night, it is possible things had fared differently, for he had proved a surer guide than did Godfrey, the spy.
At first he thought of making for Bridgwater and Lupton House. By now Richard would be on his way thither with Ruth, and Wilding was in haste that she should be reassured that he had not fallen to the muskets of Wentworth's firing-party. But Bridgwater was far, and he began to realize, now that all excitement was past, that he was utterly exhausted. Next he thought of Scoresby Hall and his cousin Lord Gervase. But he was by no means sure that he might count upon a welcome. Gervase had shown no sympathy for Monmouth or his partisans, and whilst he would hardly go so far as to refuse Mr. Wilding shelter, still Wilding felt an aversion to seeking what might be grudged him. At last he bethought him of home. Zoyland Chase was near at hand; but he had not been there since his wedding-day, and in the mean time he knew that it had been used as a barrack for the militia, and had no doubt that it had been wrecked and plundered. Still, it must have walls and a roof, and that, for the time, was all he craved, that he might rest awhile and recuperate his wasted forces.
A half-hour later he dragged himself wearily up the avenue between the elms—looking white as snow in the pale July dawn—to the clearing in front of his house.
Desertion was stamped upon the face of it. Shattered windows and hanging shutters everywhere. How wantonly they had wrecked it! It might have been a church, and the militia a regiment of Cromwell's iconoclastic Puritans. The door was locked, but going round he found a window—one of the door—windows of his library hanging loose upon its hinges. He pushed it wide, and entered with a heavy heart. Instantly something stirred in a corner; a fierce growl was followed by a furious bark, and a lithe brown body leapt from the greater into the lesser shadows to attack the intruder. But at one word of his the hound checked suddenly, crouched an instant, then with a queer, throaty sound bounded forward in a wild delight that robbed it on the instant of its voice. It found it anon and leapt about him, barking furious joy in spite of all his vain endeavours to calm it. He grew afraid lest the dog should draw attention. He knew not who—if any—might be in possession of his house. The library, as he looked round, showed a scene of wreckage that excellently matched the exterior. Not a picture on the walls, not an arras, but had been rent to shreds. The great lustre that had hung from the centre of the ceiling was gone. Disorder reigned along the bookshelves, and yet there and elsewhere there was a certain orderliness, suggesting an attempt to straighten up the place after the ravagers had departed. It was these signs made him afraid the house might be tenanted by such as might prove his enemies.